


listen, everything i love i will devour

by vvideotape



Category: Reservoir Dogs (1992)
Genre: F/F, Genderswap, Identity Issues, Non-Linear Narrative, very loose descriptions of injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-29
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-06-18 02:16:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15475284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vvideotape/pseuds/vvideotape
Summary: they’re on a stakeout and shooting the shit, windows rolled down and sleeves rolled up against the afternoon heat, and the voice says: if you were brave enough to ask, this could be yours.scenes from a universe where orange & white are lesbians.





	listen, everything i love i will devour

there’s just a few days left to go when mr. white makes eye contact with orange after a meeting and jerks her head at her car, eyebrows raised, in the casual way she does most things. like she thinks it’s no big deal, and you shouldn’t either. freddy goes. mr. white turns the radio on and they drive out, around the city. she takes them up on the drive, and freddy keeps waiting for her to talk, but she doesn’t.

with the windows down it’s almost cold, wind whipping past them, and freddy wraps her arms around her chest. in the dark, in the car, just them, freddy feels herself relax in increments. the familiar feeling of her skin being too tight, of itching to get out, starts to subside. she can breathe. they might as well be alone in the universe.

it’s quiet in their little bubble, peaceful, and freddy’s vision narrows to black and white. the car cutting through the night plunges mr. white rapidly between darkness and light as she watches, street lamps flashing overhead as they pass, and freddy thinks from some calm, distant place that it’s the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen. mr. white’s knuckles around the wheel, the scar on the bridge of her nose, the firm set of her jaw. her free hand reaching up to push her close-cropped hair out of her face. it’s hard to look at.

white’s eyes are fixed on the tight curves ahead, so freddy lets hers slip shut, unobserved. she allows herself to picture a future, spiraling out on the road before them, where they just keep driving. where they don’t stop, head down to mexico. she pictures mr. white, broad shoulders bare in the sun, feet in the sand, a beer in one hand and a smoke in the other. pictures the pleased smirk on her face, can see it sharp as a knife. she lets herself fit into the vision, then, too. the way her skin would freckle and pink in the sun, the feeling of sitting beside mr. white, just like this, facing the same direction. in this future they are warm and safe and at night they can see the stars in a brilliant expanse above them, stretching endless in the sky.

the stars get too bright, the weight of them becoming too much to bear, and freddy has to blink the vision away. she turns her face to the window and leans her head against the seat-back, presses a fist tight to her mouth. mr. white is singing along to the radio softly under her breath, her voice a low, scratchy hum. freddy’s heart expands sharply in her chest, a pure, hot pain. she thinks to herself, _alright, now, do it now_ , but her worthless tongue withers in her mouth and she cannot form the words.

freddy’s always been a coward, first and foremost, can’t ever take what she wants. this jaunt at crime-fighting heroism hasn’t changed anything. she swallows down the shrapnel bursting where her heart used to be, already adjusting to the feeling of the vast, sucking wound. she reels back in the pieces of mr. orange she’d been letting float loose behind them, winds them tight around herself.  there was never a version of this night where she told mr. white the truth, or even something glancing close to it. this is the road.

the night breaks open around them.

 

freddy stands in front of the mirror wearing mr. orange’s clothes. she twists the ring on her finger, messes with the collar of her too-big jacket. she’s still moving like freddy, jerky and nervous, twitchy in the way that’s gotten her in trouble her whole life. orange is cool. orange is collected. orange moves like molasses and spins stories from golden threads, has the hands of a thief and the smile of someone who gets her own way. she moves through the world like she deserves to be there. freddy squeezes her eyes shut hard, rolls her shoulders in tight little loops. breathes in and out. freddy looks into the mirror and mr. orange looks back. orange’s face opens into something like a smile, cocksure and alive.  

she goes down to play judas.

 

she thinks someone is screaming but she can’t tell who, there’s a roaring in her ears like an overheated engine. maybe this is what being struck by lightning feels like. white hot and wrong. orange opens her eyes. freddy opens her eyes. orange and freddy open their eyes and there’s nothing there, the brain all comes down in fire, fire, fire, burns her sight out so the only thing that’s left is the freezing cold and the screaming-

the discs of light clouding freddy's vision flicker out, dissolve in sparks. her eyes try to focus on something in front of her but it all swims together, takes energy she doesn't have. someone's touching her, then, and she jerks. but it's a warm palm on the side of her face, a hand gently pushing her hair back off her sticky forehead, and mr. white is saying, "hey, baby, you with me?" her face comes into focus, so quick it makes freddy nauseous. her blood is smeared on mr. white's cheek. larry’s cheek. "c'mon, kid, i need you to talk to me."  
  
"yeah, yeah, i'm," freddy says, and she wants to reach up and wipe the blood off of mr. white but her hand won't do what she's telling it to right now.  
  
"good, good kid." larry says, and her voice is soothing, but there's something strained at the edges, manic.  
  
"no, i, i need. hospital." freddy says. her lips are wet. 

 

here’s the thing about mr. orange: freddy has spent her whole life pretending to be people she isn’t. it comes easy to her, second nature, to crawl into someone else’s skin and walk around in it, to fashion these masks to pull over her own blank face. a mask for her parents. a mask for the academy, for the force. a mask for the boys she dated in college. a mask so well-worn and familiar that sometimes she forgets she’s wearing it, just for herself, so she doesn’t have to sit alone with a stranger.

the thing is, she’s good at it. she crafts these characters with some fragment of a fucked up truth in them, so they feel real. each skin-suit a version of freddy though the mirror darkly, twisted into a shape that doesn’t make her sick. orange is one of her better creations, with a heart pumping blood and goals and dreams and desires. freddy doesn’t want much, never has, but orange is greedy, wants to hold the whole world in her grubby little hands, wants to reach out and touch it all. eats like she’s starving, drinks like a dying man, pulls each breathe with vigor, wants to grab all the shiny things she sees and gather them tight to her chest. orange wants and wants and wants, will never be satisfied.

the thing is, orange wants mr. white, and freddy does too.

 

every breath feels like sucking in knives, twists in what used to be her stomach. she’s crying like a little bitch. freddy is dying on the floor of a warehouse and she feels like a scared, lonely kid, just a worthless half-dead cop and these pieces of silver to keep her company. blonde tortures that poor, dumb motherfucker and afterwards as he blubbers his way through panic all freddy can think is, _if our roles were reversed i would have rolled on him. i would have snitched._ she finds she’s fresh out of pity.  

 

“hey, kid, what does your husband think?” mr. white says. she’d gotten out of the car while orange was in the restaurant grabbing their shitty takeout, and now she’s leaning against the passenger door, all louche and comfortable and smoking a cigarette, as orange jogs back with the greasy bags. orange starts to look up at her, puzzled, but her eye catches on the tattoo on white’s muscled forearm and her brain statics out for a second.

“what?” she says, not really listening, slams her hip a little too hard into the car. her throat is dry.

“i said, what does your husband think about all this, dumbass,” mr. white repeats, not unkindly, and snaps her fingers near orange’s face. she swallows hard and averts her gaze, down to the food. cartoonishly, horribly, her eyes catch on the wedding band she’d put on orange’s finger this morning, and it dawns on her. the practiced line about the husband readies on her lips but mr. white is warm beside her, and when she looks back up her face has this open, somehow generous look on it. like she’s just waiting to agree with whatever orange says.

“oh,” freddy says, and finds she can’t get the lie out, that it feels like glass in her mouth, sharp and brittle. she can’t bring herself to offer it to mr. white. “there’s no husband. it’s so- it’s so men will leave me alone.” the smile on mr. white’s face turns pleased, smug, and freddy feels herself flush, suddenly embarrassed. “i don’t-”

white is laughing at her now, soft and low, and freddy clenches her jaw shut. when she’s done, mr. white reaches out and knocks her fist gentle against freddy’s shoulder. “i know, kid,” she says, still amused and satisfied, but she sobers down into something more tender, and it startles freddy. “i know.” freddy gets in the car without saying anything, itchy and hot.

 

there’s an instant, during the job, where orange looks over and meets mr. white’s eyes and some charge flows vital and electric between them and she can’t keep the grin off of her face. she’s not thinking about anything else, not the warrants not the security guards not the roiling panic in her gut, for that one perfect second, only: _i could do this with her forever._  her blood is singing with it.

 

white, leaning into her at the bar and laughing. white, holding her hand. white, covering their backs with a gun in each hand, unafraid. white, talking her through the plan. white, face like thunder, huge and unfathomable as an angel. white, running that plastic comb through her hair like she’s making her presentable, gonna take her out dancing. white, slinging an arm around her shoulder like it doesn’t mean anything. white, giving her the small mercy of pretending she’s not dying. white, in her undershirt and suit pants, a sacred image of what freddy might be if she tried. white, standing over her body, saying, “you die next.” white, guiding her down the street away from the shot-out car, half-dragging her, hand gentle on her back. white, inviolable and immovable, letting her cuffs get stained with freddy’s blood. white, telling freddy her name.

 

she couldn’t figure it out at first, why white had taken orange under her wing almost immediately, how she seemed to treat her with this sort of inexplicable care. but freddy thinks now that white had recognized something in her, warped though it was, and found that thing worth protecting. she spends a few days beating herself up for being careless, for being sloppy, but eventually the pull of mr. white’s warmth is too much to do anything but to relax into it, to follow her around chasing that light. freddy lets herself want.

“you got a problem with her, you got a problem with me,” mr. white says one afternoon, all brusque and matter-of-fact. mr. pink freezes in his seat a little, where he’s been leering at orange from across the table. her carefully constructed cloak of bluster and confidence is straining at the edges and shaking unsteady around her, worn down from constant use and exhaustion. in some ways having mr. white here makes that part harder for her, casts in sharp relief how much she’s just a shoddy imitation of the real thing. all fake bravado and posturing. white is the real fucking deal, all untouchable and self-possessed cool. pink snaps his gaze to white, and after a moment seems to give.

“y’know, i was just wondering why we got so many bitches on this job,” he says, spits it out of his mouth like it’s dirty. mr. white leans forward into his space, and it’s suddenly like she’s ten times her size, has become a black hole, sucking everything else in the room into her orbit. she looks like some terrible roman god.

“because i’m the best in the goddamn business,” she says, voice still and calm and cold. “ _do_ we have a problem?”

“nah,” pink says, cracks a slimy little smile. “nah, nah. like i said, just wondering. no need to get all worked up about it.” mr. white smiles back, easy, but the hand she claps heavy on pink’s shoulder with a white-knuckled grip makes him wince.

“that’s what i thought.”

 

maybe larry’s only being so tender because she knows orange is dying, but freddy kind of thinks that’s just how she talks to her girl whether she’s bleeding out on a dirty floor or not.

 

freddy’s been running since the day she was born. like maybe if she can just keep moving the world will swallow her up and she won’t have to think anymore. like maybe if she can just keep moving the truth will let her go. freddy’s realistic, has always known she’s a rat, but. rats survive, she thinks, and keeps on going.

here’s the thing about mr. white: sometimes freddy looks at her and just wants to die. she is brash and sharp and steady, and just being around her makes freddy feel loud and too fast, too bright. mr. white looks at orange like she can see right through her, and right through freddy, too. like white is staring into the hot sticky guts of her and that she might like what she sees.

it’s an awful, sick feeling, being flayed open. she stands in front of mr. white and feels like her whole being has been blown apart and spread out across the tracks of her gaze. like she’s been vivisected and pinned open and anyone could see the most intimate, animal parts of her. but only white sees them, casts an appraising eye on her and somehow doesn’t find her lacking.

a traitorous part of freddy keeps telling her, _you could have this._ they’re leaving joe’s. they’re sitting together at a table and drinking shitty coffee, alone in a room full of people. they’re going over the floor plans again. they’re on a stakeout and shooting the shit, windows rolled down and sleeves rolled up against the afternoon heat, and the voice says: _if you were brave enough to ask, this could be yours._ they’re all up in each other’s space and laughing at some dumb story they’re telling back and forth and mr. white has this look on her face like she wants to eat orange alive. it would be so easy. but orange doesn’t ask and neither does freddy.

 

freddy thinks, with a clarity that cuts through the bloodless hysteria her mind has gone up in, _if it’s the last thing i do, i will tell the truth. i have killed this woman and i will tell her the truth._  and for once, she opens her useless coward mouth. and for once in her entire goddamn life, she makes something worth saying come out.

**Author's Note:**

> title from [nova scotia](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNv3OU9ugAE) by the mountain goats. more recommended tmg listening for this fic: [we have seen the enemy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=151aszvB1XY), [orange ball of love](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBPnC9-TmL8), [chanson du bon chose](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_q8W7rDNDtc), [horseradish road](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCrNDKbvUU0), [international small arms traffic blues](https://archive.org/details/tMG2017-11-15/06InternationalSmallArmsTrafficBlues.mp3).
> 
> can't say thank you enough to al for listening to me talk about this for months without complaint & for offering endless encouragement. happy birthday, pup. 
> 
> les dogs forever


End file.
